An alternative to the Interbalnearia route? The details of the plan to avoid blockades that the government looks at with optimism

And there is an idea.

Pando Toll

The MTOP Road Administration is analyzing a proposal submitted by the consortium of four companies that carry out the maintenance of the Interbalnearia route –CVC, Traxpalco, Molinsur and Colier– for expedite the most congested stretch: between the Pando toll and Parque del Plata.

The plan is build a new route parallel to the Interbalnearia route that works like a fast track to reach the spas of the east and for the return. The MTOP is studying the proposal with optimism, according to sources from the portfolio told The Observer. The final project will be presented by the consortium of companies at the end of this year and the primary proposal will be presented to the minister next week. In the government there is enthusiasm that the plan prosper and solve the problem of roadblocks and the difficulty of the inhabitants of these neighborhoods to cross the Interbalnearia route.

The idea consists of build a 16-kilometer route parallel to the Inerbalnearia, to the north, and in the intermediate section with route 8. To access, you will use a section of Route 34 which is born immediately after passing the Pando toll to the east. MTOP sources explained that the route would cross fields and neighboring roads that will have to be expropriated to build the new section. The route will be two-way and will not have intersections.

From Montevideo to the eastthe route can be taken from the pando creek and you can re-enter the Interbalnearia in the Solís Chico Stream, to avoid crossing the section from the Neptunia spa to the Parque del Plata spa. The end of the new section will be about 500 or 600 meters before the branch of Route 8, where the Soca tollbooth is. “You would leave by the Interbalnearia route and before reaching the Pando stream a new route would start that leads to routes 8 and 11,” explained the MTOP source.

Another alternative is build a third lane on the Interbalnearia route and a viaduct in Salinas, although that proposal does not excite the government so much. In fact, at the end of April when the Minister José Luis Falero already had the idea of ​​the companies, he said that what he liked the most was the option to make a fast track. “Perhaps it can give us greater security and not continue insisting on a national route that is in an urban fabricwhich is what should never have happened in Uruguay,” he said at a luncheon for the Association of Marketing Managers at the end of April.

The MTOP has made “interventions” to also improve transit in populated areas of the coast but the traffic jams to and from the east – especially in season and in Tourism Week – continue to be a common occurrence and mobility for the inhabitants of the spas has not improved either, according to the sources, who described the interventions as “patches”. .

For example, to improve crossings where there are usually accidents a tunnel was built in Pinamar –which opened in August 2022– which serves as an underground passage under the route that connects Pinamar with Neptunia to the north and south of the spas, which have a very large internal mobility.

Underground tunnel in Pinamar inaugurated in August 2022

At the inauguration, Falero explained that this tunnel was “a pilot plan designed to expedite transit through the Interbalnearia. The objective is to divert pedestrians and vehicles that want to cross the road through a lower passage,” he said.

At the same time, there is another underground passage that is planned to be built before the crossing of the Solís Chico stream, in Parque del Plata. “They are always interventions on a route that already passes through cities, because from Solís Chico to Montevideo it is practically an avenue. It ceased to be a fast route”considered an authority of the MTOP.